So, you’re into BDSM, excellent! You want someone to do something nefarious to your tender bits, awesome! And you’ve found a stranger online who says they are quite advanced at doing those very nefarious things to the sorts of tender bits you have. We have a winner!

But they don’t want to meet in public. Only in a private location.

:record scratching sound:

Ladies and gentlemen and everything in between and outside those designations, today’s mentor post is by Meantoys. He is going to explain a thing or three about the importance of meeting in public for the kinky folk.

I’m going to preface this by saying it was sparked by a thread on FetLife, where a young person was saying people were fakes because no one wanted to engage with them one-on-one and that it was dangerous meeting in groups for reasons that were too complicated and nonsensical to get into.

[This was taken directly from a long message thread started by the bane of the kink existence, a young man who thought he knew more than he did.]

Okay, it’s cooked for a while, this is your answer.

Historically, the BDSM scene, the leather scene and the various alt lifestyles out there were what is called “closeted.” Many people went their entire lives thinking they were hopelessly deviant, diagnosed as sick, or worse yet, shunned or murdered. Meeting was dangerous.

The munch, or public large gathering evolved as a way for people of alternative lifestyles to meet publicly, chat and be around others of like mind, while not upsetting the locals with their difference. This is a decades old tradition. quite possibly centuries, all the way back to the old “hellfire clubs” of the 1700’s. It makes people feel safe to have their friends and new acquaintances around them, and it creates an aura of mutuality when we meet in groups. Anyone bringing an outsider who causes trouble has done so publicly, and the group can defend itself from a single troublemaker should someone try to crash the meet.

The people who meet in public are as real as it gets. We have vetted one another, looked into each other’s eyes, shaken hands, and many of us have been far more intimate with one another than you have ever been with anyone. What we do is up close, personal, private and very very real.

BDSM is about intimacy, any online intimacy that attempts to mimic real BDSM play can only be a mawkish, clumsy simulation.

The internet has not changed the rules about the culture that you are interested in. It has made it easier to organize, it has made it easier to meet, but the culture has not changed. You do yourself a disservice attempting to jump start your introduction to the scene by jumping straight into a private meet. Munches, public group meetings and the vetting process are there for everyone’s good, and for communal safety.

If you don’t want to meet in a group because you are shy, why would you have a profile photo up with your face on it? If you don’t want to meet at all, and would rather sit behind a keyboard you will never know the intimacy of real BDSM.

In summation. What you think is real, isn’t. What you ridicule as unreal, is as real as it gets. If you continue to alienate people who have been doing this for their whole adult lives, you will miss out on centuries of accumulated experience.